Water

Water security is critical to CSBP’s operations at Kwinana and the business’s long-term water strategy aims to ensure sustainable water use, as well as the management of wastewater, including reuse and recycling. 

During the year, WesCEF secured additional volumes of industrial quality recycled wastewater from the Water Corporation’s Kwinana Water Recycling Plant, offsetting demand for scheme water and other less sustainable resources. 

A review of groundwater abstraction bores has also commenced to ensure a reliable and secure supply of groundwater can be maintained. However, the water strategy also recognises groundwater is becoming an increasingly scarce resource and alternative water supply options are actively being considered. 

WesCEF manufactured a similar quantity of its water-intensive products in the 2021 financial year compared to the previous year, and accordingly the volume of water consumed was relatively unchanged; 4,412 megalitres in the 2021 financial year compared to 4,740 megalitres the previous year. 

Bunnings 

Water management is a material issue for Bunnings as greenlife in every store nursery requires regular watering to maintain product quality. Bunnings recognises there are water-related challenges in many parts of Australia and New Zealand and its focus is on using water more efficiently and replacing mains water with reclaimed (or collected rainwater) or recycled water where possible. 

Water tanks are a standard inclusion for all newly built stores and are used for watering store nurseries and flushing store toilets. At the end of the 2021 financial year, there were 227 locations with water tanks across 329 sites in Australia and 10 water tanks across 41 sites in New Zealand.

Bunnings also provides D.I.Y. advice for customers on how to make the home and garden more water efficient. For example, in February 2021 the Bunnings stores in Auckland held water-saving D.I.Y. workshops for families in conjunction with Watercare. These workshops aimed to show customers the importance of reducing shower times to four minutes and repurposing greywater during stage three water restrictions. 

Kmart Group 

Minimising water usage and restricting chemicals used in production, such as dyes, colourants and solvents, is important to ensure product safety and to reduce risk to water systems. Managing this risk is particularly critical in the production of apparel and textile products given the high use of water in the washing and dyeing processes of fabric mills and laundries. 

Kmart Group has committed to two time-bound targets to minimise its impacts on water. To support the implementation of these commitments with suppliers, the business has joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) and Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) foundation.  

In the past year, Kmart Group developed a phased implementation roadmap to meet ZDHC compliance requirements, with the current focus being on wet processing facilities used by strategic suppliers. Kmart Group has now registered approximately 76 per cent of the wet processing facilities (e.g. mills, laundries) used by strategic suppliers onto the ZDHC Gateway platform, with approximately 68 per cent reporting wastewater test results and 40 per cent reporting compliance with the chemical inventory MRSL (manufacturing restricted substance list). 

_{GRI 103-1, GRI 103-2, GRI 103-3, GRI 303-1, GRI 303-2, GRI 303-5}